


The Girl From The Train

by W01FS0NG



Series: Torchwood: Rift Files [2]
Category: Firefly, Snowpiercer (TV 2020), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universes, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Post season 2 of Torchwood, Pterodactyl, Rift activity, Season 2 of Snowpiercer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:00:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29974962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/W01FS0NG/pseuds/W01FS0NG
Summary: Alex decided to go snooping around some old files when she discovered something interesting...
Series: Torchwood: Rift Files [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2195661
Kudos: 8





	The Girl From The Train

**Author's Note:**

> There is an OFC who is from the previous part in my series Torchwood: Rift Files.
> 
> Also, I wrote this without watching yesterday's Snowpiercer episode...
> 
> PPS: If you see ---- then that means a POV change and a time skip.

Alex sifted through the archives of Big Alice. Even though she was the train’s engineer, Snowpeircer (the train they attached themselves to) was doing a good job of keeping things running. It was nighttime, so technically everyone should be in bed. Yet, here Alex was, still in her day clothes. She went to the archives, searching for anything the girl could use against Mr. Wilford. The man has previously shut her out of discussions. Something happened in Snowpiercer, and she doesn’t know what.

The girl sighed.

This might have been easier if her mother was on board, but she had to be sent away to a research station.

She wondered how her mother was. It wouldn’t be long now until she reached the station. Alex wondered about how quiet it was. Snow acts as a sound absorber, so it would always be deathly silent, save for the wind. Melanie probably only heard the sound of her breathing and her own voice. Alex wanted her to come back sooner than scheduled. A lot could happen in a month. Despite the fact that Wilford had raised her these past eight or so years, she wanted Layton and her mother to win. 

There were certain files tucked away in one of the storage cars. She noticed them a while back, but is just now getting to explore them. The box containing them was labeled Torchwood. Opening the box, Alex found a strange circular object. She placed it on the shelf, wanting to sift through paper. 

There was a hill of case files. Some were of Torchwood employees, others were of strange humanoid creatures Alex thought only existed in science fiction. One of the larger employee files was of a man named Jack Harkness. According to the paper, he had over 100 years of Torchwood service. That was odd, right? No one could possibly live to be that old. Or could they?

Her eyes wandered back to the circular object before Alex picked it up. What was it? There was a file on it stating that the device could manipulate time and space. Why would Wilford have this? 

The teenager toggled with it. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a blinding light. It soon surrounded her. Then, she found herself in the middle of the street. There was no frost or snow. Cars went about. People walked all around. The sun was out. A few clouds littered the sky.

The honk of a horn brought Alex’s attention to a large truck. A man shouted in a language she didn’t understand. People stared at her. 

That’s when she got it. “Sorry!” Alex shouted before getting to one side of the street. She looked around at everyone before heading into an alleyway. Alex stared at the device and used it again.

This time, she ended up in a plaza of sorts with many pillars and a giant water feature. She could see docks with boats tied to them. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two people appear out of nowhere; a man and a teenage girl. Alex locked eyes with the girl. 

Just as she was about to walk away, the teen called to her. “Hey!” The teenager walked up to her. “Are you okay?” Alex thought about running, but where would she go? Sure, she remembers some of what the world was like before the trains, but not enough to really get by. And why would this girl ask if she was okay? Did she know something?

“Uh, yeah,” Alexandra told them. She then got a closer look at the man and recognised him. He was the leader of Torchwood in the 21st century. 

Captain Jack Harkness walked towards the two of them, eyeing the device in Cavill’s hands. “Excuse me Miss. Where, uh, where’d you get that?”

Alex placed the circular device behind her. “I found it,” she answered truthfully. She mentally chidded herself. Really? That’s the thing you say? 

“Where?” asked the teenager as she stepped forward.

Alex took a large step back. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Harkness shifted his weight and cleared his throat. “Try us.” 

Alex debated running again. She could probably outrun one of them, even then, she wouldn’t know the layout well enough to properly escape. So then, maybe that’s a no? What else can she do? Wilford didn’t exactly get his head of security to teach her how to fight. All this girl really knows is train mechanics, among basic education.

After many seconds of silence, the man spoke again while briefly turning to the girl. “Aurelia and I were just about to head into town for lunch. Why not come along?”

“Do I have a choice?” 

Aurelia shrugged. “That depends. Do you know what you’re holding?”

“A vortex key-thing.” Alex chidded herself again for adding the word “thing.”

Harkness breathed out a small laugh. “Okay, now how hungry are you?”

“Not very.”

“That’s fine. Come on.” Aurelia and Jack began to walk ahead.

Quickly, Alex caught up with them. “Where are we going?”

“There’s a spot near here which sells pretty good fish ‘n chips,” the teenager told her. What was that? Alex never heard of such a food. Fish and potato chips? The teen’s eyes widened. “You’ve never had fish ‘n chips?” 

The short haired girl shook her head. “No.”

“Well then you’re in for a treat.” Harkness told her.

The two of them lead her to a food truck. This subverted her expectations. She thought they would take her to a building. After the order was put through and the money was paid, it took a few minutes for them to procure the meal. They got four.

Once it was handed to them Alex felt like an idiot. “Oh, by chips you meant french fries.” Jack took two while the girls each took one.

“That’s correct,” Aurelia stated before popping one of the fried potato slices into her mouth. “What century did you say you were from?”

Cavill glanced at the ground. “I didn’t.” 

“Well then let’s get that sorted.”

———

Aurelia and Jack lead the mysterious girl through the front entrance of the Hub. She could see the confusion on the younger teen’s face when they entered what seemed like a tourist information center. 

“Here you go, Ianto,” Jack stated as he gave him a box of food.

“Thank you, sir,” Ianto smiled. He then noticed the extra person. She almost seemed surprised at Ianto’s accent. It was probably because the only people she’s met so far had American accents like her. “Who’s this?”

Aurelia shifted her weight, turning her head towards the girl. “We don’t know really.” Ianto got up to open the door into the Hub.

The girl stiffened slightly. “Oh, Uh, it’s Alex. Alex Cavill.” 

Jack smiled. “Well Alex, welcome to Torchwood,” he ushered the two girls inside. 

They watched as the stranger wandered about with wide, curious eyes. Alex flinched at the noise of the prehistoric flying dinosaur. She gasped and asked, “Is that a pterodactyl?!” The girl nearly dropped her food. Aurelia quickly dropped off her food at her desk, taking a few small bites of her food.

Aurelia could feel the amazement and confusion radiating off of the girl. Alex walked through the autopsy room and all the desks. Three of which were empty by the way. It’s been strangely quiet in this place since Tosh and Owen died. There were holes left in their passing. The only other person not currently here was Gwen and she was out with her husband Rhys. She stopped at the hand inside of the tiny refrigerator.

The short-haired teen “Who’s hand is this?” She asked them.

“A Time Lord’s no doubt,” Aurelia stated as she walked towards her. She then faced the leader, seeing him set his food down in his office. “If only Jack would tell me which Time Lord.”

Just as the captain was about to speak, Alex interrupted them. “What’s a Time Lord?”

Arellano shrugged. “People with the technology to control time.” Cavill’s mouth became agape over how nonchalant the statement was.

“What?!” She walked closer to her. “There are people who can control time?!” Mixed emotions came from her. Amazement and realization were most prominent. The empath wondered if Alex would want to see the Time Lords to correct something from her past, or even her timeline.

The older teen’s lips pursed before she shook her head with another shrug. “Yeah, something like that.” Aurelia then took the circular device from her hands. “They use devices like this.” She brought it over to her desk and set it down. Alex soon followed after her. The long-haired girl took out her Sonic Screwdriver and scanned the device. She hummed, nodding. “This one’s very old. I’m surprised you got it working.”

Alex’s brows creased. “All I did was toggle with it,” she muttered, finally setting her food down. 

“Must have quite the mechanic’s brain then,” the older teen commented.

“What are you holding?”

“This?” The teen held out her Gallifreyan tool that she borrowed indefinitely from a Time Lord she once knew known as The Scholar. “This is a Sonic Screwdriver. It’s also a piece of Time Lord technology. It’s sort of like a high tech scanner that calculates things and such.” She let the device back down before turning to Cavill and leaning against her desk. “So, where’d you find the mini Rift Key?”

“Just in a storage unit. The box was labeled Torchwood.” Her eyes squinted, as if catching something unfamiliar. Aurelia figured it must have been the words Rift and Key. The girl also wondered if Alex caught on to the fact that the key could be used to take people anywhere and any when. “What kind of rift?”

Torchwood’s teen huffed. “In Cardiff there is a tear in the fabric of time and space. We call it the Rift. All sorts of people and technology wash up here.” She held up a finger. “And that includes the alien kind.” The girl got off her desk in favor of pacing a little. “I myself have not slipped through, I was merely placed here by stone, time-sapping creatures.”

“So, where are you from then -- er -- when?” 

She smiled. “The year 4997. The human race had begun expanding to others planets, because Earth got ‘used up’ in a sense. It was also a snowball for a time.” she nodded her head in remembrance. “Anyway, when we reached the first galaxy, we terraformed it. The core worlds created a government called the Alliance, a lot of people rebelled creating a seven year long war… yatta yatta yatta. A few years after the war, the human race then began discovering alien life forms just as advanced, less than advanced, and more advanced than ours.” She smiled, but it soon faltered. Aurelia definitely didn’t want to tell this girl about the atrocities of the Alliance. After all, she was a part of an experiment that turned kids into empathic assassins, using The Academy as a cover. “So then, where are you from?”

Alex swallowed, her eyes searched through what she remembered. “The year is 2021, it’s been seven years since an extinction level event known as the Freeze. That only happened due to a catastrophic failure of climate change engineering. They wanted to cool the planet down, but it worked too well. The last of humanity lives on trains that run forever. The two trains are currently plotting against each other.” Her face scrunched as if she remembered something. “And I need to get back.” She exhaled a breath she didn’t seem to notice she had. “I need to help my mother.”

“A freeze isn’t supposed to happen for another two thousand years,” Jack stated, finally rejoining the conversation. He walked towards them and crossed his arms. “You must have come from a different universe if _that's_ the year you came from.”

She gave him a questioning glance. “Why? What year is it here?”

“August 2008.”

“2008?” The girl echoed in shock.

Aurelia cleared her throat. “I can try to calibrate the Rift Key and the Rift Manipulator to get to her universe but it might take some time.”

“I don’t have time! I need to get back!” She shouted without meaning to. The regret of shouting was clear on her face. 

The former assassin shifted her weight. “If we get it right, we can get you back on your train the very moment you left.”

Alex gave her a deadly serious look. “How sure are you?”

She winced with a shrug. “Not very????”

Cavill’s brows creased in anger. “Then what good are you!?” Aurelia stood straighter, stiff and wanting to slap her. A flash of fear radiated off of the girl, so she ultimately didn’t.

“Sonic Screwdrivers can do most everything,” the older teen stated before taking both devices to her desk.

“Except wood!” Jack playfully jabbed at her. The girl just waved him off.

“So…” Alex trailed off, facing the man in an old army jacket. “I read your files. Did-” she blinked, stopping herself. “ _Do_ you actually catch aliens?” The leader wondered why she didn’t ask any questions about him. Maybe that would come later.

“Among other things,” Harkness answered. The man smirked. “Wanna see one?” She thought it over for a small moment before smiling and nodding. He led her down to the cells. The alien in question was Janet the Weevil. It was still being held in the middle cell. The creature without a nose made its usual noises, groaning and roaring.

Alex stared wide-eyed at Janet. She took notice of its skin; it’s color, and how many wrinkles it had. Her eyes wandered down to its teeth. Then, she asked, “Why’s it wearing a boilersuit?”

Jack gave her a look. “Really? That’s what you ask first?” The man decided to indulge her. “Pretty sure they acquired them through theft. There’s tons of them living in the Sewers of Cardiff. No one really knows where they’re from.”

“I wonder if they could have survived the Freeze,” she muttered. Her volume was so low that Jack almost didn’t catch her.

Harkness’ lips pursed. “They might have,” he considered. “Their blood does run colder than ours. But altogether it’s highly unlikely.”

“Oh.” she almost sounded disappointed.

Silence hung in the air for a long while. Janet made more noises. “Why, don’t you eat some of that food?” He suggested, shifting his weight. “It’s getting cold.”

—————

Hours later, Alex sat around, almost bored. Her leg bounced as she tried not to glare at Aurelia. She knew that staring at her wouldn’t help her work faster, but the girl found she did it on impulse multiple times. Each time, the older teen stared back at her briefly before returning to her work. It was almost as if she could tell what she was thinking, or at the very least, feeling.

Alex was sure there was a file on Arellano in the box she found. If only she read it instead of glancing at her picture.

It was almost strange to her that there were alternate universes. But she supposed, it made sense, if this world wasn’t supposed to have an ice age for two thousand years.

Ianto had been kind enough to show her around more, even though there wasn’t much else to see. Well, there was the morgue, tiny greenhouse, conference room, gun range, and both archive rooms. There, Alex had spent most of her time reading up in the various aliens and tech that were stored. After a while though, she needed a break from that.

When the pterodactyl came around again, he commented, “I helped jack catch him. He likes Chocolate, too.”

Now though, she was bored out of her mind. She missed her mom, she missed Emilia, she missed the trains. 

Aurelia’s voice almost spooked her. “GOT IT!!!!” The long-haired teen exclaimed with glee. She threw her hands up. One of them held the vortex key.

Alex immediately stood. “You got it?!” She found it hard not to smile.

“Yeah!” Aurelia walked up to her excitedly. “And a pocket in the rift is opening up in about two minutes on the warff, so we need to go now.” She linked their arms and stood on a platform.

Confused as to why the two of them were standing close to the bottom half of the giant water feature, Alex began questioning, “I thought the entrance and exit were-“ that’s when the floor moved up. “Whoa!” She clung to Aurelia.

“Cool right?” The teen asked her with a smirk. Alex looked up to see a tile from the plaza being removed.

Once they were out in the open, Alex wondered aloud, “Wait, how is no one looking at us? We literally just popped out of the floor.”

“There’s some kind of psychic interference, corner of the eyes spiel, or something.” The teen glanced around. “It’s only when you step off the tile that people notice you.” After hopping off the lift tile, she turned back with a smile. “Ready?” Alex nodded. “You only need to turn it once when you're in the rift, then twice when you’re back on the train.” 

“Okay,” the train engineer exhaled, grabbing the Rift Key from her.

Aurelia placed her hands on the girl’s shoulders and moved her as they stepped towards the railing. “You’ll be on your way in about twenty seconds.”

It was then that the short-haired girl realized she should probably say something. “Thank you for doing this.”

“You’re welcome,” the teen smiled. “And good luck.”

A bright light surrounded Alex and she did as instructed. Once finding herself in the storage car of Big Alice, she turned the non on the device twice. The bright light soon disappeared. 

The young Cavill exhaled. After what seemed like a long day, she was back. Plus, she was the only one who’s ever seen an alien. (Unless Wilford saw one a long time ago—she hoped that wasn’t true). The girl snuck into her bunk and found that she couldn’t go to sleep. Maybe she was crazy because she found herself wanting to return there. Or maybe, she just wanted a few more friends? Either way, Alex couldn’t wait until the trains ran through Cardiff.

—————

Aurelia sat at her desk, writing notes down in Mandarin. 

“You wanted her to stay, didn’t you?” Jack asked as he walked up to her. The man then leaned against the furniture adjacent to her. “You could have solved that thing in less than three hours, yet you took six.”

Arellano shrugged. “Maybe,” she sighed. Her eyes locked with his. “I mean, we _do_ have two vacancies. I wanted her to really get to know the place and wanting to come back.” She paused, almost unwilling to admit it. “I miss them, Jack. Heck, Alex was even my own age.”

The leader considered this. “I know, but she was pretty attached to her own reality already.” His eyes regarded her and took in her saddened state. “Hey, why don’t you go grab Ianto, microwave us some popcorn and I’ll go pick a bad action movie?” 

Aurelia smirked. “Alright. You’ve got a deal.” She quickly went off to the kitchen.

Jack walked over to the tv near their rooms (if you could even call them that; Aurelia liked to call them bunks [not to be confused with a bunk bed]). They were almost hidden from sight. The only way one could reach them was through hidden stairs. 

As he noticed the American movie Speed was currently on cable, Jack couldn’t escape the nagging feeling. He wondered how long Torchwood would truly last at only 3/4ths capacity. Would they prevail? Or die out?


End file.
